Sabahou el kheir! Welcome to our Expedition Earth week on Egypt! Everyone’s been looking forward to this week because we were planning to do a mummy experiment. And I’m not sure about your kids, but when the word “mummy” comes up, everyone gets excited! But first…we had to stamp our passports so we could continue on our journey! Here are some of the things we covered this week: Where Egypt is on the world map and located Cairo and the Nile River How to say “Hello” in Arabic Learned about the Egyptian flag and its meaning How to pray for the Egyptian people Read Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography About children in Egypt Read: Living World Encyclopedia Geography from A-Z vocabulary Completed a Egypt lapbook activity Completed and classified animals of Egypt Learned about Mummies and King Tut Performed a Mummification Experiment on an apple Learned about the Great Pyramid of Giza, and made our own model of the pyramids Learned about the … [Read more...]
K4 Curriculum ~ Number Order Puzzles 1-50
Hi everyone, I’m excited to share some new Number Order Puzzles with you. They’re part of my K4 Expansion Pack! (Don’t worry, if you purchased the expansion pack, they are already in there!) --> Click here to download the Number Order Puzzles <-- To play: Cut apart puzzles along lines. Use number order to arrange pieces and complete puzzle. Puzzles go from 1-50 to help with number recognition and order. Click here to see my other K4 Curriculum Activities! These activities are part of my K4 level expansion to my Letter of the Week Curriculum, click on the images below to see more activities! Hope you enjoy! … [Read more...]
Educational Insights Sneaky Squirrel Giveaway
Hi everyone, I have another awesome giveaway from the super cool people at Educational Insights today! We had so much fun reviewing the Sneaky Squirrel game. It was easy enough that the younger kids could catch on, and it moved fast enough that it kept the attention of everyone. The kids literally love this game! The Rules: The game starts with all the acorns in the tree box. Each player takes a turn with the spinner. If it lands on a color, they can use the squirrel tweezers to grab that color acorn and add it to their tree stump. If it lands on a number, they can pick that many acorns. If it lands on the sneaky squirrel they can steal one from another player. If it lands on the sad squirrel they skip a turn, and if it lands on the wind all their acorns get blown back to the tree and they start over. The first one to fill their stump with one of each color wins. The cost: $19.95 (But you know I have a freebie to offer…keep reading!) My son had a great time, even though he was … [Read more...]
You Can Read & K4 Expansion Winner
Hi everyone! I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday weekend! As promised, I have a winner for the K4 Expansion Pack and You Can Read giveaway! YAY! Congratulations to Marci at Life on Rancho Relaxo! You’ve won both the K4 Expansion Pack and You Can Read membership! Thanks to everyone for entering to win and for reading our blogs! I hope you enjoy the set! … [Read more...]
Nigerian Banana Fritters Recipe
Hi, and welcome to the fried foods portion of this weeks Nigeria activities! Today we’ll be making Nigerian Banana Fritters. They’re fairly easy to make and went over fairly well with the folks here at Confessions of a Homeschooler. So first off we’ll gather our ingredients, you probably have most of this at home already. Ingredients: 2 ripe bananas 2 tablespoons milk 2 eggs 1 tablespoon margarine, melted 1 cup all-purpose flour 3 tablespoons white sugar 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 pinch ground nutmeg 1 quart oil for frying 1 cup confectioners' sugar for dusting Directions: Step 1: In a large bowl, mash the bananas. Step 2: Mix in milk, eggs and margarine until smooth. In a separate bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir dry ingredients into banana mixture. Step 3: Heat oil in a deep fryer or heavy bottomed pan to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Drop batter by spoonfuls into hot … [Read more...]
West African Benne Cakes
If you missed the Nigerian quicksand experiment, go back and read it first, then come back here for a yummy West African Benne Cake recipe! These cookies are really easy to make and surprisingly tasty! I even had everything on hand which makes it much easier. The only odd-ball ingredients are the sesame seeds and if you’ve done any kind of Asian cooking you probably have some in your cupboard. If you don’t, go get some, they’re sort of an integral part of this recipe. Ingredients: 1 cup brown sugar 1/4 cup softened butter 1 egg 1/2 tsp vanilla 1 tsp lemon juice 1/2 cup flour 1/2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 3/4 cup toasted sesame seeds Step 1: Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Mix together the sugar and butter until creamy then stir in other wet ingredients. Step 2: Add flour, baking powder, salt, and sesame seeds. I know, I know, it seems like A LOT of sesame seeds…just do it. Don’t be afraid. Step 3: Drop teaspoonful 2 inches apart onto a greased cookie … [Read more...]
Nigeria Quicksand Experiment
Nde-ewo! Welcome to our Expedition Earth Nigeria quicksand experiment. Quicksand is a soupy mixture of sand and water where sand is floating in and on the water. It is both a solid and a liquid at the same time, making it a trap to moving animals and people. Quicksand occurs when water has flooded an area of sand and then is trapped in that area. Floods, underground springs, or an earthquake can create ideal environments for quicksand which usually occurs around river beds. In this activity, we will make our own quicksand to get a feel of how it can be fluid and solid at the same time. I mentioned it in the full Nigeria activity post, but I have this super cool friend who does a “Boys Science” day each month for a group of little guys. And since my poor son is the only boy surrounded by girls all day, he loves to get out and do “man stuff”. My friend is a brave lady who always comes up with super fun stuff for them to do. Little did I know she had a whole Nigeria quicksand … [Read more...]
iPhone Educational Tools
When I first got my iPhone the thought of letting one of my kids even touch it was like “NOT HAPPENING!” Then slowly, I allowed them to play games here and there as a way to keep them occupied. It was such a hit, my kids asked if they could use the tickets they earned from doing chores to play on my iPhone! Now, as a homeschooler, I’m always trying to think of new ways to make learning fun. I’ll admit, I’m an iPhone newbie, and honestly I didn’t realize was that there were literally TONS of educational games out there! This epiphany lead to what’s now affectionately referred to as “There’s an iPhone in my Workbox!”. I think it would be even more fun with an iPad, but for now everyone’s happy with the iPhone idea. I purposely leave a workbox empty when I’m filling them, and instead put a sticky note with the game I want them to play on it. (I’m not foolish enough to leave my phone unattended in a workbox overnight, plus my fish would die if I didn’t tend to … [Read more...]
Expedition Earth: Nigeria
Nde-ewo! Welcome to our Expedition Earth Nigeria Lessons! This week was more fun than I’d originally anticipated all thanks to one of my dear friends who has great ideas and isn’t afraid to sacrifice her home in the name of science! So we started our week as we typically do finding Nigeria on the map, and reviewing all of the other countries we’ve learned so far. We’ve got 26 countries under our belts thus far, and I’m pleased to say that everyone, including my preschooler knows where they all are on the map, the capitals, and how to say “hello” in the native language! Here are Some Things we Studied: Where Nigeria is on the world map & located Abuja and the Gulf of Guinea Learned about the Nigerian flag and completed our coloring page How to say “Hello” in Igbo (they also speak English) Prayed for the people of Nigeria and the Riffi Berbers Learned about children of Nigeria Read Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography Completed a Nigeria … [Read more...]
K4 Expansion Pack & You Can Read Combo Giveaway!
Hi everyone, I’m thrilled to announce a super fun Combo Pack giveaway today! Carisa (1+1+1=1) and I decided to get together and offer a giveaway of our K4 Expansion Pack and You Can Read as a set! YAY! As you know, I beefed up my Letter of the Week curriculum for my 4 year old to give her a bit more of a challenge with the K4 Expansion Pack! Well, Carisa’s You Can Read program is a perfect compliment for beginning reading and learning sight words! My K4 Expansion Pack starts with beginning reading, vowel recognition and introduces a few sight words with my beginning readers. Then Carisa’s You Can Read really drills those site words through lots of interactive games! One of my favorite activities from the You Can Read program are the Word Hunts and Word Boxes. The word hunt has each word in different fonts so it helps them get used to ‘seeing’ the word in various forms. I love how the different sized boxes really help my daughter figure out how each letter should look. … [Read more...]
